The Devil You Know
by Reading a Pulse
Summary: When psychotic telepath Carrie White escapes from her laboratory prison, the BPRD sends Hellboy to stop her. Mayhem ensues. Rated T for dark subject matter and euphemistically-depicted violence.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: This is a Patchwork Fic splicing Carrie's rampage in the book with the ending of the movie.**

* * *

Carrie White languished in her padded room, wrapped in her straitjacket as if it were the only thing holding her together. Six months had passed since emergency services personnel found her in the sunken ruins of her home, and the powers that be saw fit to commit her to a medical research facility. The National Institute of Health had reason to believe that Carrie would not be the last of her kind, and her study could yield a means of suppressing or even eliminating that terrible power.

No one told Carrie this, but she knew it anyway. Everyone walking past her cell had their brains crackling with thought, and Carrie could no more ignore it than she could an unpleasant smell or a persistent, nagging sound. Locking her away for twenty-one hours a day so deprived her other five senses of stimulus that her mind-sense increased to compensate.

(noisy thoughts busy thoughts stupid thoughts thoughts thoughts)

So though she lacked a newspaper or television—not that her mother allowed such things, anyway—she never wanted for news of the outside world.

(crying relatives want me to die)

(doctors want to poke me)

(sign on my house says burn in hell well lucky you im already here bitch)

For those six months, Carrie remained completely passive, though MRI scans showed that her catatonia wasn't clinical. Like a turtle in its shell, she withdrew her capacity to act. She feared the power she could unleash on everyone around her at any moment, just by flexing an imaginary muscle. When she flexed, beds floated. Cars exploded. Knives took flight. People died horribly.

(they deserved it)

But it still scared her, the power she had, the bomb in her brain. So she locked it up. Layer after layer of psychic locks sealed her telekinesis from ever flexing again.

(ive got hell inside me momma please help me)

Carrie's mother warned her about hell for her entire life, but it wasn't until NIH that Carrie understood hell didn't have to come after you died. The hell she made for herself was stronger than her fragile cocoon of glass, leather and pillows. But she preferred that to turning her world into an external hell, like the Prom massacre. Or the street-level Armageddon she made on her way to kill her mom and their house. Every time her mind struck out, the ruins added kindling to her inner hellfire. Desperate to keep that from coming again she flared with hidden hostility toward anyone who wanted to

(help? they don't wanna help no one wants to help they just want tests on me and stuff)

Perhaps the people she killed brought it on themselves, but the rage so intoxicated her that she extended her wrath to her tormentor's parents. Toward the police and firefighters. People she didn't know and had no reason to hate.

(theyd hate me if they knew me)

This was her state of mind for those six months.

(oh momma im so sorry)

But one day, she felt a different presence. Someone else came to the other side of the wall, neither a scientist nor a patient. This person came specifically to see her.

(huh?)

Carrie reached out and touched this new visitor's brain, reading the pages where her passive, always-on mind-sense only showed her the cover. She did that from time to time when she was bored. No one noticed and usually Carrie could have some private fun at the expense of their secrets. But this new person… she could sense a cornucopia of emotions from this visitor. Loss. Pain. Anger. Shame at being angry. Pity.

Pity?

No one pitied Carrie.

Carrie forced herself deeper into the soul of this visitor, curious as to what could lead her to these emotions. The pain was from the loss of her son. The boy-

(tommy?)

-died at Carrie's hands. That explained the anger. The visitor felt ashamed of her hatred, because Jesus told his followers to love their enemies

(jesus oh no not again)

Sure enough, the woman held a rosary.

(go away)

She prayed for Carrie.

(WHY?)

She thought that Carrie had been through hell already and it would be awful for her to experience the real thing. She prayed that God would take care of Carrie…

(STOP)

_Flex._

The rosary jumped out of the woman's hands and snagged around her throat. The cross at its end was pulled back as if by an invisible hand. Carrie pulled harder, HARDER, throttling the visitor with her own rosary. Just when Carrie felt the woman's brain shriek as its blood supply dwindled…

*snap*

The string on the rosary broke, scattering beads everywhere and dropping the woman on the floor.

(DAMMIT)

Carrie's mind-sense flooded with the acrid taste of cortisol as panic flooded the brains of those around her.

"I thought you said the TK cells in her brain were atrophied!"

"They were! Her brain must have found a way around that somehow."

"_What?_ How is that possible?"

"We'll find out in the autopsy! Gas her!"

_Flex._

The one-way mirror to Carrie's padded cell exploded.

"Never mind! Call 911! Get a SWAT team here! Anyone with guns!"

"Evacuate the building!"

_Flex._

The straps on Carrie's straitjacket unfastened. She slid out of her leather cocoon like a butterfly emerging from its pupa.

(ahh that feels good)

The doctors fled. Carrie had no intent to kill them. Her escape had been driven by that persistent, insufferable survival instinct. As much as Carrie hated her life, she knew dying would be worse. She stepped over the trembling visitor and made her way to the entrance of the building. She briefly considered finishing off the woman she failed to kill

(stupid weak string)

but ultimately decided against it.

(already killed momma once felt bad not gonna do it again)

As Carrie got closer to the exit, she paused. She could sense two squads of SWAT officers waiting for her outside the hospital. Their orders sang in their testosterone-saturated minds: "**Shoot to kill, motherfuckers!**" Once Carrie left the hall and entered the SWAT team's line of fire, she would be blown to pieces.

She couldn't see them, but a quick skimming of their minds showed her the way they'd been trained to hold their guns. The position differed whether they held the little, spraying ones or the big, chomping ones.

(i wanna leave your guns cant stop me)

_Flex._

Thirty guns flipped around in their wielder's hands. Thirty triggers pulled on their own accord. Thirty men collapsed with the insides of their helmets repainted. The glass windows and doors at the hospital entrance exploded. Carrie could have just opened the door, but breaking things felt strangely satisfying. Hell was already loose, so Carrie no longer saw a reason to hold back. For the first time in half a year, she had control over something greater than herself. The world struck, so she struck back. If that wasn't in scripture, it should have been.

She telekinetically pushed the glass shards out of her path, using her mind as a broom. The whirring of a helicopter's blade dragged Carrie out of her task. A man in a red suit leaped from the chopper and landed on the ground eighty feet below. To Carrie's shock, the man stood up. Surely such an impact would have killed him.

When Carrie came closer to the point of impact, she saw that it wasn't a man at all.

(not a suit)

(red skin)

(tail)

(hooves)

(aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa)

What remained of Carrie's sanity collapsed. All the abuse she endured at her mother's hands rocketed back to her mind. The rock music. The dirtypillows. The menstruation. Even the prom. Mom said those things would lead Carrie to the devil. There stood before her incontrovertible evidence that Margaret White had been right. Satan had come to take what was his…

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

"My orders are, if possible, to take you alive. That certainly sounds like a more agreeable solution than the alternative," Hellboy said as he loaded his handgun, "What do you say?"

"Go away!" Carrie shrieked

"Sorry, sweetheart, but running scot free's not an option anymore. Cooperate or I'll be forced to-"

"I said_ go away_!_"_

_Flex._

An armored car launched toward Hellboy. The demon somersaulted out of the way, his skin hammered by the shockwave and gravel from the impact he just avoided. "Damn," Hellboy whispered.

_Flex._

Carrie lifted shotguns and submachine guns from the hands of the dead SWAT officers. Levitating in the air, the weapons made it look as if Carrie had a private security escort consisting entirely of invisible men. Carrie arranged them in two rows of four, one three feet above the other. That would eliminate any chance of the devil dodging her fire.

She pulled all eight triggers, and every gun jumped backward. The submachine guns kept flying backward the longer she held down their triggers but at least the devil continued to wither under their punishment.

The bigger ones only fired once per pull, but she liked the sound they made, at least: *BOOM*

The SMG's clatter and the shotguns' thunderclap were so loud Carrie couldn't hear the faint tinkling of bullets hitting the ground.

Intact bullets.

Though her one-woman firing squad hurt Hellboy, even he was shocked when he snatched a glimpse of his left arm and saw it perforated not with holes but… bruises? He may have been tougher than the average human but a bullet still went through his flesh like anything else.

Except today, for some reason. "I'm bulletproof? What the hell?" he wondered aloud.

To Carrie, the devil's apparent befuddlement at its invincibility must have been a joke at her expense. She roared like a lioness and hurled her empty guns at the devil. He blocked them with that massive, stone right hand of his. Carrie swing them like baseball bats but they only broke against the devil's stout musculature. He "helped" her along by stomping the weapons into pieces too small for her to use.

"This is your last warning, young lady!" Hellboy announced as he drew his Good Samaritan pistol, "I'll be forced to shoot!"

"_Go to hell_!" she shrieked.

Hellboy cocked the hammer of the massive handgun. Frankly, he wasn't sure he could do it. Hellboy had no problem killing demons, monsters, creatures like him. It was his job description. Carrie, on the other hand, was just a girl with an incredibly crappy childhood, cursed with powers beyond belief and emotions she couldn't control. Reminded him of a certain someone he'd gotten quite close to.

Carrie let loose a primal scream of hatred. "Oh, crap," Hellboy said to himself as every vehicle or other heavy object not bolted down began to levitate…

(to be continued)

**Author's note: I couldn't find a way to make this fit in the narrative, but Hellboy's "resistance" to bullets is easily explained by physics: when a gun fires without anything holding it, the force will be divided between the bullet/buckshot going forward and the gun going backward, resulting in a weaker blast than usual. I've never seen any other story combingin telekinesis and guns acknowledge this. I suppose a TK user skilled enough with firearms could replicate a strong grip and keep the levitating gun "grounded," but Carrie's never used guns before so this all caught her off-guard.  
**

**If I got the physics wrong (and if you give a crap either way) let me know in the reviews. I strive to get this sort of thing right.**


	2. Chapter 2

Author's note: A guest poster asked me which version of Carrie this was. I initially envisioned this as the book Carrie with the end of the 1976 movie version patched on. I haven't seen the newest version with Chloe Grace-Moretz, but if it really has inflated the scale of Carrie's rampage to approximate that of the book, then patchworking this fic wouldn't be necessary. It's just Carrie Grace-Moretz, thus explaining the presence of fMRI machines (which didn't exist in 1976). With that out of the way, back to the story.

**Trigger Warning: **Brief recollections of domestic and spiritual abuse

* * *

—**Ten Minutes Earlier—**

Hellboy had been sitting in the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense briefing room, receiving instructions on clearing a Chinese warehouse of unruly zombies (again) when Agent Myers walked in and brought him aside. He hoped to slip out with the demon before anyone else noticed, but of course everyone turned their heads at the *click click click* of Hellboy's hooves walking away.

"Change of plans. Hellboy's going to Maine," Myers told the rest of the team. Hellboy didn't like being spoken about as if he wasn't there, and he liked Myers even less, but he figured that if the BPRD was about to send him alone, he probably could take care of it himself.

"So, what's the deal?" he asked as Myers hustled them down the familiar path to Director Tom Manning's office.

"Carrie woke up."

Hellboy made an excruciatingly drawn-out sigh. Carrie White was the most glaring embarrassment in BPRD history, whose sordid tale was needlessly relayed this story to him again in Manning's office. The scale, speed, and body count of the telekinetic's rampage through Chamberlain, Maine was so great that a cover-up was impossible. Even if the exploded gas mains and structural damage could be passed off as an earthquake, the telepathic Cliff's Notes of Carrie's miserable life that she sent everyone in Chamberlain made her role in the disaster unmistakable. Perhaps as punishment for not catching on to this one threat they were supposed to be vigilant for, the feds denied custody of the comatose goddess to the BPRD, instead plating her in the hands of the much more P.R.-friendly National Institute of Health. The NIH sequestered her to an off-the-books medical research facility in Northwest Arostook. The best the BPRD could do was to implant a psychic mole whose constant observation of Carrie's mind necessitated extensive psychotherapy for crushing depression.

So now the agency wanted Hellboy to wipe up their mess. He had a feeling he wouldn't enjoy this.

"With all due respect, Manning, why don't you send Liz instead? She has more in common with Carrie, anyway. Get them to talk and when they break out the tea just lace Carrie's cup with chloroform. Problem solved."

Manning chose not to mention Hellboy's woeful misunderstanding of chemistry and women when he replied, "We want you to go after her because you're the only one who can. Your appearance is perfect for capitalizing on Carrie's latent fundamentalism. She'll be too scared of the devil to fight."

"So you think I'll win because of how I _look_?"

"Among other reasons, yes."

Hellboy's stone hand presented a red monolith to Manning.

"Kick and scream all you want, but you're going," Manning replied, "What's more, you're going in this."

When Hellboy finally capitulated, Myers led him out of the office and into the hangar, where a black helicopter awaited them. It had large, round fixtures bulging behind the canopy.

"Conventional air travel won't get us from HQ to our target location fast enough to stop Carrie from reaching a populated area or burning Northwest Arostook down with those explosions of hers," Myers explained.

_So I guess that's why you're not bringing Liz…_ Hellboy thought.

"So we've fitted this helicopter with the ultimate stealth teleporter. No lights, no sound, it just appears at its destination. Manning figured that if anything went wrong, well, you'll survive."

The device bore bearing the last logo on Earth Hellboy wanted to see, a name forever entangled with mechanical failure at the worst possible time:

ZINCO

"Is this revenge for me getting you transferred to Antarctica?" Hellboy mistakenly spoke aloud.

Myers kept professional silence.

* * *

—**Present—**

"Oh, crap."

Heavy objects floated around Hellboy like the wreckage of an oceanic plane crash. The ground stayed beneath his feet, but for how long?

An ambulance drifted between Hellboy and his target. The Good Samaritan pistol was certainly powerful enough to punch through the vehicle and into Carrie, but a blind shot like that would all but ensure a miss. Hellboy couldn't afford one with only four rounds in the cylinder.

But Carrie couldn't see him either, and therein stood Hellboy's chance. He plotted the course of his roll once the ambulance flew toward him so he could also avoid other thrown objects.

Something light but hard struck him on the left side. He reflexively turned to look at it.

It was a hospital gurney.

_Really?_

*WHAM*

The SWAT team's armored truck slammed into Hellboy from the right, wrapping him into its grille. The red guy's hooves scratched for purchase on the pavement to no avail. Hellboy could barely think until…

_There she is!_

The armored truck pushed Hellboy out from behind the ambulance, putting Carrie at the edge of his vision. He knew he couldn't hit her—even in ideal conditions his aim disappointed the BPRD—but he could at least-

*BLAM*

The Good Samaritan spoke with a thunderclap worthy of a much larger gun. Hellboy heard Carrie drop everything she'd lifted, but inertia kept the truck going forward as gravity pulled its wheels to the ground.

_Aw crap_, Hellboy thought as the truck tipped forward. He used his stone hand to push himself out of the truck's grille, limply rolling out of the way before the flipping vehicle could mash him into the pavement.

Groaning, the demon stumbled to his feet, "You're tough, but I'm not going away."

Carrie clutched her hair and screamed.

"Damn, I should have really thought about my phrasing," Hellboy muttered. Not that he had the ability to do so at the time, but still…

Carrie fell to her knees and sobbed. The left hemisphere of Hellboy's brain crackled with the signal to capitalize on her helplessness: "Take the shot! I won't have another chance like this!"

But the right side of his brain—and the Blood soaked into the pores of the True Cross that the Samaritan's handle was hewn from—shouted that execution couldn't be the only choice. Surely other BPRD agents had to make a similar call when sent after that walking firebomb Liz Sherman in the 70s.

_Really? What alternatives do I have?_ The BPRD hadn't even equipped him with basic tranquilizers and Carrie was much too fragile to physically subdue, provided she let him get that close…

As Hellboy ran through his options, he kept his handcannon trained on her, just in case.

* * *

The Devil kept his enormous gun aimed at Carrie for what felt like an eternity. Why was he drawing this out so much? Carrie just wanted it to be over.

Her view of the enemy flared and broke up in her tear-distorted vision, reminding her of all the times throughout her life that her mother bludgeoned her into such a state, physically or otherwise. Indeed, the wavering shape of the Devil shifted to that of her mother, his gun likewise morphing into the wooden crucifix with which Margaret White tried in vain to exorcise Carrie's innumerable demons.

(stop trying to trick me)

She saw right through the Devil's plan: he wanted to make her hate someone who showed her the love of Christ, the only one to show Carrie such love when misguided churches urged her to spare the rod. Mother taught that those churches were the actual agents of Satan. Not her. Mother understood that the path to Heaven lay in pain, in denial of oneself, in the punishment of sinful pleasures.

(im sorry momma why didnt i believe you)

Carrie blinked her tears away. Her mother was the Devil again. She grew encouraged at her defeat of his deception.

The Devil finally lowered his gun and took cautious steps toward her. She stood up and staggered backward, never taking her eyes off of Satan no matter how much she wanted to.

(stay away from me i dont wanna see whats in your head you scum)

Thus far she had avoided touching the Devil with her mind or hearing his thoughts. The sparks of his brain were too distant to reach her, and she would do her utmost for it to stay that way.

Thankfully, God saw fit to fill the environment with heavy objects, so she could keep the Devil at bay without touching him. But there had to be a way—some way—to put him down for good.

Carrie tried prayer, struggling to recall the words that should have come to her so clearly, so often had her mother shouted them. But as she tried, the words were so hot with resentment that she couldn't bear to hold on to them, reminding her of the day Mother forced her hand on a hot skillet to give her a taste of Hell.

She opened her eyes. The Devil had holstered his gun and was coming closer! Screaming, Carrie returned to prayer, his time grasping the burning words firmly and throwing them at Satan. But she couldn't hold on to the words for more than a second at a time, and in her haste she spoke them in combinations that didn't make sense.

But then she remembered her mother's advice: faith that made sense was no faith at all. However little sense they made, Carrie's prayers would still have power.

Except they didn't. The Devil still came closer. He actually extended a hand to her, his face full of kindne-

(LIAR!)

Of course the Devil would prey on Carrie's sinful yearning to not be hurt, her avoidance of the pain she deserved. She recoiled and searched for more options. Physical, verbal and spiritual resistance had thus far failed her, but what had she done to the men with those guns? Perhaps that would work.

It would be dangerous to reach for something that close to the Devil. She saw medallions dangling from its handle, no doubt etched with demonic sigils. She had no way of knowing if her plan would work. But that was what faith was all about, right?

_Flex_

Some stray thoughts from Satan tingled her mind-sense like static electricity, but it was nothing surprising: frustration.

(ha ha so now im pissing you off too)

For as long as she could remember, Carrie stepped on others' toes without meaning to. With the Devil, though, she'd stomp as hard as she could.

* * *

"Christ, she's like a wounded animal," Hellboy thought as he searched for the right words to defuse Carrie's resistance. "I'm not going to hurt you," he said.

"Maybe you won't…" Carrie spoke for the first time since her gun barrage, her voice wavering with hesitation. Hellboy saw that as a good sign until she finished her sentence: "…but I will."

Hellboy felt the Good Samaritan slide up his ribs on its own accord, its hammer cocking.

"Shit!"

He reached for the gun, missed, and ducked at the last second before it went off right where his head used to be. His left ear screamed in mortal pain.

* * *

Carrie fumed at the abject failure of her plan. Not only did the gun miss, but the force of its blast sent it flying off into the distance. Carrie chased it like her childhood kite, one of the few toys her mother permitted her to have growing up.

"Damn it, come back here! I'm trying to help you!" she heard the Devil call behind her.

_Flex_

Carrie caught the gun with her mind and sucked it back in. She grabbed hold of it, praying forgiveness for touching this satanic instrument, even if it was to the end of resisting the Devil. The wooden handle didn't burn her like she feared it would. Instead it sent her hand some kind of signal she didn't understand, like every ridge between the grooves in her palm was subjected to a tiny hug. Mother held her like that sometimes.

(i get it already i shouldnt have killed momma now stop harping on it)

The gun was heavy, so heavy that when she turned to face Satan she couldn't aim unless she supported the barrel with her left hand. The medallions brushed her wrist, daring her to look at them. She didn't. The wood—or something in the wood—vibrated. She ignored that, too.

Satan's eyes widened, granting Carrie one of her precious few moments of true joy in her life-

(like when i danced with tommy)

No! That was a sin, an illicit joy, but conquering the Devil would be the first joy she'd ever experienced that wasn't in some way sinful. If only her mother were here to see this. For once she'd have a reason to be proud of her daughter.

"Stop! For the love of God, don't shoot! It'll hurt you!" Satan begged.

Carrie's response: "Good."

*BLAM*

* * *

The third report of the Good Samaritan faded into silence, and Carrie's arm…

"Jesus Christ…"

Her now-useless hand that dropped the gun looked like a bundle of sticks held together by raw beef. The jagged ends of her broken forearm had been pushed through and out the other side of her elbow. She wasn't screaming yet. Probably in shock. She'll feel it later. Hellboy didn't look forward to that.

Given that she held it at the hip, she likely broke a few ribs, too.

_Speaking of which…_ the shot had grazed Hellboy on the side. It wasn't deep, but it bled into his leather holster. _Dammit, that's going to take forever to clean out! Not that I'll be doing the cleaning, but…_

Hellboy trailed off as he noticed that Carrie looked past him for some reason. He followed her gaze to—

*WHAM*

_I can't believe this worked on me twice!_ Hellboy castigated himself as an airborne ambulance t-boned him. The vehicle sent him through the shattered glass doors of the research facility (_Who the hell puts glass doors on an off-the-books lab anyway?_) and into the hallway. The ambulance got wedged in the hall entrance, but Hellboy flew another dozen or so yards, crashing through one set of double-doors before skidding and landing at the foot of another.

"Ow."

Evidently unsatisfied with the punishment Hellboy had received thus far, life saw fit to throw an earthquake at him. The building shook. Unseen windows shattered. Tremors this powerful shouldn't happen in Maine. "Wait, what did Carrie do to her scho-Oh, crap."

Hellboy bolted upright, seeking an exit. He may have been fireproof but he sure wasn't epicenter-of-an-exploding-building-proof. He leaned forward and barreled down the way he came. He burst through through the doors (which swung both ways, thankfully) as pipes audibly groaned and ruptured, releasing the scent of gas into the hall.

Hellboy couldn't spare the breath to swear as he sprinted toward the ambulance. Choosing not to waste time on potential dead ends, he jumped through the ambulance's empty windshield, smashing the barrier to the patients' chamber with his stone fist. Each step left flecks of blood in his wake. His bare hand wasn't the best at staunching the wound, but it would have to do.

He burst through the rear ambulance doors and shut them. Then the ambulance hit back, hard. The roar of the explosion made it clear what happened. Fire shot through the crack where the rear doors were held shut by Hellboy's body, as the blast forced the vehicle from the hall like a potato from a spud gun.

_Ohhhhhhhh shiiiiiiittttt!_ Hellboy's mind screamed, his lungs having all the breath pressed out of them.

He had no way of telling how far he'd flown, but it soared over the treeline in an arc before concluding its collision course with-

_Dear God do _not_ end this by killing me with a tree._

Instead the ambulance stopped in mid-flight, releasing Hellboy into the unforgiving arms of gravity.

*thud*

The fall was thankfully short, but even the dread notion of the ambulance falling the rest of the way and crushing him wasn't enough for his muscles to move. Minutes passed during which all Hellboy could see were the roots of a tree, dimly illuminated by the burning laboratory in the distance. The ambulance's silence convinced Hellboy it wouldn't fall any time soon, so he rested for a bit before peeling himself off the ground. As luck would have it (or not) the ambulance shat Hellboy within eyeshot of Carrie.

_Oh, for… wait._

She wasn't moving.

Hellboy stumbled over, using trees as temporary handholds to steady his course. Maybe the explosion killed her? Hellboy hoped that wasn't the case, less out of concern for Carrie (who had at this point beaten the sympathy out of him) than the exasperating knowledge that he could have just _shot_ her if this ordeal would just end with her death anyway.

The light wasn't good enough to tell if her chest was moving, but Hellboy didn't notice any new wounds, so he cautiously designated her "incapacitated" and signaled the chopper with a BPRD-patented "stealth flare" invisible to human eyes but perceptible to radar. It put up with blunt trauma a heck of a lot better than more complex machinery, like the "space age" Bluetooth earpiece that didn't even survive the SWAT truck collision.

The retrieval team arrived wearing lead-lined helmets to keep Carrie from sensing their thoughts, while their body-suits similarly insulated the electrical signals of their muscle movements from reaching her. If Carrie was still alive, as far as she could tell they weren't there. Hellboy had no idea what difference that would make given the obvious noise and wind of the helicopter itself, but he shrugged. Whatever made them feel safe…

Satisfied that she would be their problem now, Hellboy set off to look for the Good Samaritan, less for the gun itself than for the sake of what hung on it: the late Walter Bruttenholm's rosary. The demon blood in Hellboy's veins howled at the stupidity of it all: sentimental attachment to objects, calling a human "father" when it was truly a demon prince who sired him, obligations to the dead that only made a difference for the living. Nonetheless, he'd been raised to value those things. More than that, he chose to value those things.

As for Carrie, he prayed that when she woke up the BPRD wouldn't bring him in to help her adjust to life as a freak. All the drugs in the world wouldn't glue together a mind that broken.

(To be concluded)


	3. Epilogue

—**Ten Minutes Earlier—**

After smiting the Devil with her surprise ambulance, Carrie hobbled as far away from the building as she could. She felt no pain in her ruined arm, although an odd pressure in her side punished her attempts to run. She kept going until she could hold its distant figure between her thumb and index finger (on her left hand, of course).

Then she crushed those digits together.

_Flex._

*KA-BOOM*

The heat and pressure of the explosion may have been muffled by layers of trees, but it still agitated the exposed bones in Carrie's right arm.

The pain hit her all at once.

(OH MOMMA IT HURTS TOO MUCH IM BROKEN SOMEBODY FIX ME)

Carrie would have screamed, but couldn't. A sharp pain in her side punished her when she tried, forcing the scream inside, shaking apart her inmost being. The pain crested before leveling off and dropping, taking every other part of Carrie's mind with it. She could feel her body giving up, pushed far beyond its limits until it burnt out like a lightbulb. Her consciousness momentarily shot into focus by the unbearably loud impact of a wrecked ambulance wedging itself between two trees, ejecting something heavy and dark onto the ground, but she couldn't see what it was before the light took her away…

…But not to heaven. It pulled her back and forth between being and nonbeing, coming and going in waves. As scary as nonbeing was, it didn't hurt. Being sent her back until the pain crested and pushed her away in a sadistic tug-of-war. Each time she returned something changed in the unmoving environment. Sometimes the wind brought the stench of the burning lab, sometimes it didn't. Sometimes the Devil was there, sometimes he wasn't. Contrary to her expectations, Carrie actually dreaded being alone worse than being in the presence of her tormentor.

(please god im so alone)

But what else was new?

Then another light came, a different one than that brought by the pain. It was the loudest light Carrie had ever seen, its roar tearing through the forest and whirling through the trees.

(is that you jesus im done please take me away)

Something lowered from the sky, and other things came with it. They looked like people but Carrie couldn't touch their thoughts. It was like they weren't real.

(not angels not shiny enough)

But they were real enough to grab her and put her on some sort of bed, every movement of her arm sending a march of broken glass down her nerves.

(what are you where are you taking me god please say something im sorry im sorry im sorry)

_Flex_

Nothing. She couldn't touch anything, but she could at least reach for the sparks of someone else's mind, some way to prove there was anyone else in this forest besides the not-men.

She reached far enough and found someone.

She didn't know who it was, only that he was searching for something.

The gun; the infernal weapon that embraced Carrie and then mauled her. Just like her mom. Like Sue. Like everyone she'd ever known.

The gun meant something to this man. It did not maul him. It had something attached to it that belonged to the old man who read bedtime stories.

A rosary.

Icons of saints.

(what)

At first Carrie thought she was remembering her mother again, but these weren't her thoughts. The rosary hung right on the gun, clear as day while the man intently searched for it.

A man with a big red hand made out of stone.

(trying to confuse me again)

But she knew when people were lying. She perfected that in the hospital. It gave off a special, nervous charge. That didn't come from the Devil.

She had no energy to think of what it meant. The light dragged her away again as the swaying of the rising bed ground Carrie's mind into silence.

* * *

Carrie still wasn't in heaven. It was white, sterile, cramped and full of machines.

(hospital again)

But she blew it up. She saw it blow up. Was it a different one?

(or was i just dreaming)

But no, there were the not-men. The not-men were the only ones to see Carrie for a long time. She flexed, but everything was bolted to the ground, including her right arm. It was surrounded by rings with cables going into her skin. Every finger even had its own rings and cables.

(doesnt hurt)

So it couldn't be some sort of punishment, although not knowing what it was proved to be punishment enough.

Her life consisted of sleep-

(nightmares)

-and tests, some of which made her flex and move things while others just had her repeat words or solve logic puzzles. Not knowing anything better to do, she complied. One time the not-men tried to put a tube in her mouth. She flexed, shoved it away. That caused a wave of liquid peace to surge into her veins, making it so she couldn't flex but didn't care. In time she learned that this would happen whenever she pushed a not-man, she'd get this rush. The not-men caught on and stopped getting her "morphine."

(is this purgatory)

Like her stay in the lab before, she had to measure time in units of nightmares. Forty nightmares in the domain of the not-men, a solitary figure came into her room. Usually the not-men came in groups of four, so this piqued Carrie's interest somewhat.

The not-man took off his helmet.

It was a woman.

She had black hair and a silver cross around her neck. Her brain-sparks wove a pattern somewhat similar to the pity shown her by Tommy and his mom. But this was more than just pity; it had a strength to it that pushed beyond coercion or prayer to the realm of action.

Compassion.

(sue is that you)

"Hey there, Carrie," the woman said, her voice faltering.

(not sues voice)

"My name is Liz," she said in a voice like someone who didn't particularly like kids forced at gunpoint to teach a kindergarten class, "Can you talk?"

In lieu of a response Carrie forced her way into Liz's mind.

(shes a freak just like me she makes fire killed lots of people)

Carrie started to cry.

Liz looked embarrassed. Carrie could sense her casting away some pre-planned speech and improvising, "Look, I'm not the best at this counseling thing but I fought like hell for them to let me in here. You need to know that you're safe."

(im-)

"-not safe anywhere," Carrie quietly keened.

"That's what I thought, too. They brought me here a long time ago. They helped me."

(shes not telling the full story theres so much pain even after she came)

"I won't sugarcoat this for you. You're still going to get hurt. God knows I did, but here we have people to pick us up."

Carrie searched for words and couldn't find them, so instead she pried into Liz's head. She got the sense that Liz knew she would do this and didn't object. She saw some of Liz's friends, like the blue man and-

Carrie flinched.

"I know what you saw, but it's not what it looks like. He's not the devil."

(shes not lying either)

"Nothing… nothing makes sense anymore," Carrie wept.

"Believe me, I've been there. But it gets better, just like your arm right there is going to get better."

(so thats what thats for)

"You know, sometimes when someone breaks a bone, it heals wrong. So that misshapen bone needs to be broken again and put in the right place to heal properly. I guess it works the same way with souls."

"Your soul got fixed?"

Liz chucked at how silly this conversation was going, "Yeah, I guess. At least I know that I've got others carrying crosses for me."

"I'm going to be _crucified_?" Carrie's eyes widened.

Liz exhaled through her nose, "No, not like that. You're a good catholic, right? Know your bible?"

(mom got mad because i knew it too much)

Carrie chose not to respond.

"Well, in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus says we have to carry our crosses. For the longest time I thought that meant we were supposed to just suffer because that would make us good somehow."

"You mean that's not how it works?"

"Now, I'm not a nun and I don't go to church that often, so you can take or leave what I have to say: we carry crosses for each other."

"What does that mean? I have to feel other peoples' hurt, too?" Carrie could practically feel the leaden weight descend upon her like the ruins of her house.

"No, not 'too.' 'Instead.' Trust me, if you keep thinking about how much your life sucks it's never going to get better. At least you can do something to make someone else's crappy life less crappy, and they'll do the same to you."

Carrie stopped crying. A tapping came from outside the door.

"I know this is a lot to take in, so I'll come back later and we can talk some more, okay?"

"Sure."

"Next time they try to feed you, just take it. It's good."

"Uh huh."

Liz left and the not-men came back. They gave her a tube and she gulped it down. She smiled.

It was peanut butter.

—**End—**

**Author's Note: Sorry I was late in marking this as "Complete," but I really think this is a good point to end the narrative. ****I didn't really envision Carrie making a full enough recovery to become a productive agent for the BPRD, but likewise I couldn't bear to give the story a downer ending, with Carrie committing suicide or living the rest of her life with chronic mental brokenness. I suppose she could just be another freak in the BPRD's care, equivalent to someone living in assisted living, but I don't know if I can turn that into an exciting story.**

**So if you want to know what happens next, I want you to tell me. Make your own sequel. Go nuts, really. You don't even have to give me credit. I don't own any of these characters, anyway.  
**


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